GTA V

It’s no secret that me and Shaun love GTA its been nearly 3 years since its launch and we’re still playing it the frequent updates have kept us interested and engaged. Rockstar has not failed us but…. Continue reading →

GTA Online is a big deal around here, I was one of the initial players who did their darndest from the start to get online and begin my own custom virtual criminal career with my very own customised-ish character (more on that later). I’ve been through the issues with online and now that most of that is done with I can honestly say that I will never look back. It was amazing, playing through the storyline with my now bestest pixelated buddies Michael, Trevor and Franklin however it’s is really something so much more endearing and personal when you create your own online avatar and what is ultimately the downfall of the city of Los Santos, Shaun- I mean Lilith has arrived to the city of bright lights and cellulite and all criminal enterprises should be worried. I decided to play a female character as it’s nice to look at a non-masculine character on screen when you’re running around killing or just chilling on the beach. It’s so much cooler to see a kinda-fetching female (more on this too) wearing body armour and armed with an AK-74 assault rifle “whacking” guys in the kapow or “bang-bang” you’re dead… way.

I thought maybe I’d share elements from what I spent most of my time doing since starting out as a nobody and getting to “sorta-somebody” now. In the beginning:

Character Creation (“the more on this” thing)
This is a sort of weird affair of creating the appearance which is based on appearances of ultimately your grandparents. You start by a screen that looks like this:

Not my character but notice how small the grandparents are? How do I know if I like how my grandparents look? – Gamezone

I thought the process was a bit difficult to be absolutely sure you liked the look of your grandparents whose face is really small you can’t see where good genes come from. Followers of this blog might have seen my old posts about Saint’s Row 4 where I had the Boss look just like Lara Croft which (there seems to be a theme here) is a nice touch. Maybe Rockstar just wanted to mix things up a bit, I had the option to use Niko and Misty as parents too however anyone who knows Niko Bellic knows that he isn’t pretty so Lilith would have to look like Misty or nothing… so I went down the completely custom try-find-the-best-grandparents-and-parents-for-the-best-look option. I don’t do things by halves when it comes to custom characters because I’m going to have to look at this mug and body for hours on end so it damn well better look acceptable.

This is Lilith doing a selfie with a recently stolen Baller (Range Rover). I think she looks fine, nice grey leather jacket

Things I do
My mission from the beginning was to buy the most expensive apartment from the get go by being fastidious in money saving and robbing loads of stores as well as stealing and selling many cars. Doing missions was actually a side note to me as it took time to load up a mission and then drive to the location and then fight it out with some NPCs alone or with other players (more on this too). Initially the take was merely OK and I found that in the time it took for me to get a mission done I could be out earning a fair bit of cash by knocking over approx 5 small convenience stores in a row with a take of around $9K all said and done. The trick is to use a helicopter (from the heliport east of Vespucci or the airport or the Sandy Shores airfield or wherever you usually see a helicopter) to get away from the cops without having to drive on a 4-star wanted level. So you start the day by stealing a Lampadati Felon GT or a Gallivanter Baller netting you $9.5k or $9k respectively and as you can’t sell another for 24 in-game hours you just fly about robbing stores for their cash.

Ill gotten gains are then spent surprisingly easily especially because I wanted to allow for outfit changes due to the feminine nature of the character. Outfits can get expensive with a female tux jacket setting me back approx $10K, so she works hard for the threads. Other than that I’ve really been on and off with friends completing missions and races, most memorable of which was stealing a C-130 type aircraft from a hangar by gunning down loads of private security mercenaries.

Pain, so much pain… and ranting!
If I were still in kindergarten and GTA O was my education system then the comment “Does not play with others” would come up in my report card. Why that is isn’t because I’m anti-social it’s mainly because everyone else is. I recall getting out of a successful mission and immediately banking my cash out of fear of being killed with 10k in my pocket only to get killed running to my car… which is tracked for me and is pointless for anyone else to drive except myself. The d-bag who killed me decided to kill me just so he can steal my car which was a very sexy orange/yellow C63 coupe looking thing with a load of custom parts. How could he/she think that the car was a random spawn, I am not sure. I died and because of this person’s ineptitude and lost $2k to “health bills” and my car went a grand total of 50 metres before it shut itself down as it was locked… to me! (why the inbred thought it was worth someone else losing $2K just so they could drive 50m is beyond me and I hope alfaalfa-whatever your silly name is dies a lonely and painful death IRL). In another situation a friend and I just completed a mission to be foisted upon the mean streets with a crazed player running my friend over and then proceeding to try that on me from which my trigger finger responded with much squeezing and spraying into his car causing a swift retreat. Why do people assume it’s a good idea to kill other enterprising criminals, you don’t even gain much from that and all you look like is a great big twat. There is much money to be made if you work TOGETHER, but that is too difficult for these ignorant, sociopathic, small-minded loonies whom for the most part (or all of it) must be terrible at life and are failing at it miserably on a drool covered, snot-slicked, smelly, wooden, dunce stool in the basement of their probably meth-addicted mom’s hovel in semi-darkness, and I say probably because they haven’t surfaced to find out yet. Play nice, kill people in death-matches where it’s appropriate and make friends amongst the criminally minded to take down the man together.

It’s fun
I apologise for the diatribe above because it’s easy to avoid the trolls by just starting a crew or friend only server and wreak havoc like you’re the only criminal in Los Santos who’s friends pop into town every now and then to make some criminations cooperatively. The game really does come together when you have people with you in the situation too, however it’s when the objective ends is when I wonder who is going to shoot me in the back which isn’t so much a worry when you have people you can trust, stand up guys. Also forging ahead in your own story with your own way of doing things is refreshing and even if the story from the single-player side isn’t there to gel it altogether what is more tantalising is that this is your story, yes you, this is your chunk of San Andreas to carve and hewn into your own masterpiece and how you get there is your own choice.

Pursuit of Happiness/Money
It dawned on me early that there would be no point buying anything other than the best apartment. Yes most of the homes have the same interior and yes the cool 10-car garage is the same if you have a $200k or a $400k place. From that point I didn’t care for the fripperies of collecting anything except cash to make 400K for my new digs. If you bought any other place you’d only retain 50% (or something like that) of your previous place’s value as a residual on the trade to the new one. You can’t own more than one property either so it makes sense to invest initially in the one you really want and then buy that and not lose 50% of your cash just because you started at the bottom or middle of the ladder. By the time I wanted to buy and had the cash I realised that the most expensive apartment actually did not have the view nor the highest level in the building so I ended up saving $9K and purchasing the second most expensive apartment in the game therefore solidifying my wanker status.

My garage last week, oh how I love this room

Would you like to lounge?

The view of Vinewood, the city is quite nice too

I kill people and love cool toys… and I take selfies just outside the military base for fun

Well yeah I expected this since we got GTA V recently is is the only thing I think about and so me posting has become a side thing but here is a catchup post for Movie Time and Gaming News, Let us begin

Movie Time

Thor: The Dark World

We get an extended look at the new Thor movie to be coming out this December it looks even more badass then the previous and you should check it out HERE.

Ghost Team One

Two roommates deathly afraid of ghosts both fall in love with a girl who believes their home is haunted. it looks stupid but hilarious as well its currently sitting at a 6.8 on imdb and it dosn’t look like it will go any further but check it out HERE

Grudge Match

A pair of aging boxing rivals are coaxed out of retirement to fight one final bout — 30 years after their last match. Staring Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro. Check it out HERE.

Gaming News

GTA V First Impressions

All righty then ill get straight to the point we here at Kokstars are all super excited for GTA V so when we got it home I seriously couldn’t stop smiling it was the pinnacle of my day and probably Shaun’s as well. Now people all over the internets have been raving about it you can see all the scores on one site at vg247 and I can’t really find a bad score and even though its been hyped to the point of easy disappointment, and yes we have spent more time driving places finding cars but from what we have seen its as good as everyone has made it out to be.

If you are reading this then you, like me are waiting anxiously for the release of the much hyped, much loved game in the line of the one of the greatest most storied franchises in the history all thumbstick and keyboard history. In some ways it’s a chance at a vacation to LA except it’s Los Santos and people are going to be trying to kill me.

I will admit that there is some paranoia in my mind for tomorrow when the doors open and I am allowed to pick up my copy of GTA V. Why? Well I could get mugged, I’m not some muscle dude with a penchant for beat-em-ups IRL. I like puppies, small kittens and motorcycle accidents when I watch youtube, ASMR videos are also great, straight up violence is reserved purely for the virtual world.

But who cares about that stuff because what do we know about the game for sure?

– It’s set in Los Santos and the game map can fit Liberty City (GTA IV) as well as all of the map from GTA: SA
– 3 protagonists, 3 different points of view to get you grounded in all aspects, from glitz and glamour to the hoods to the stix, quickly and without using just the linear storyline to take you there.
– Modifiable cars – More than that you can purchase cars and own them, you can retrieve cars from the impound lot if lost (destroyed?).
– Customisable weapons – Guns are not lost after death which is handy
– The Almighty Dollar – Not just cars but homes and planes can be bought and stored, think Test Drive Unlimited with more freedom to do even more
– Mission Customisation – Not only can you plan and execute missions/heists according to your choice, you can play the characters you want to play during the mission. 3 different perspectives. What I am not entirely sure of is whether the perspectives can be forced, can I play just Michael during the whole mission?
– Better car physics – GTA IV wasn’t to everyone’s taste last time around, I for one did not mind it although I remember loading it up back in 2008 to find that I had no idea why cars were so weird to drive versus the lo-fi GTA: SA which was actually fun. Cars handle more arcade racer like for a better experience because driving is great and a part of GTA V but it’s not everything so why not make it fun?
– Side Missions – A lot of them, diving, hunting, racing (always), extreme sports, triathlons (returning from SA), bounty hunting the list is quite long.
– Television – GTA IV had some TV on the… TV (in game) but it was just a footnote. It seems that the player’s actions could be recorded to be played back in a television bulletin or a “Cops” style TV show. I was watching the TV spots on the GTA V website and I was blown away at the production quality and attention to detail that went into what would generally be a throw away side note, may now genuinely be a fantastic component of the game. Do crime, go home at the end of the day after being chased by the cops to review all the carnage and chaos on the news!
– Checkpoint mid-mission saves – So you don’t have to replay the whole mission again if you fail just like TBOGT
– Inside house can see outside house – Interiors are a big deal in GTA V with shop fronts and homes/apartments having an uninterrupted view of the outside, possibly (finally) even seamless transition.
– There is a car that looks like an Aston Martin DB5 – you can pretend to be James Bond in LA
– Animals make an appearance under the section of things that can you can hunt or be hunted by. Franklin has a dog which is great because COD Ghosts also has dogs and that is a big deal for the COD universe (lol).
– Missions are replayable – Fantastic, you now have 3 different perspectives and endless iterations of that to play again and again.
– Rockstar have almost deliberately setup the PS4 and XBox One launches to fail as everyone will still be playing GTA V and GTA Online and won’t be bothered with anything else.

Tonight on Los Santos’ Most Wanted

Things that are hinted but not confirmed:
– GTA Online hints at the possibility that San Fierro and Las Venturas might make a return in the “constantly expanding world” (fingers crossed!)
– You can change the clothing of the 3 protagonists however it doesn’t seem to be possible for the haircut as it might detract from the trademark look.
– GTA Online player characters seem to not have a voice hence “That was awkward”
– Seasons – Postcards on the official page appear to have landmarks in different seasons, could the game run through different seasons?
– Want to buy a house in a nice neighborhood? Cause a lot of destruction and chaos in the place where you want to buy and drive house prices down so you can buy on the cheap and then cause chaos in another neighborhood to take the heat off your county to let prices go back up again. Same goes for shares except cause destruction for the entities linked to the company i.e. securavans, airplanes, offices and branches.
– Grove St is back and bigger (Thanks to Carl) – Everyone is wearing green in Franklin’s intro video. Purple features too, so the Front Yard Ballas might also be making a return as Franklin’s enemies.

Ducati 1098 – Also good as rolling gun platform

Things I am hoping for:
– Meet characters from the older series in LS – I love the idea of meeting Niko, Carl, Tommy or Claude again and not just for some passing scene but a whole mission maybe and seeing how they developed after their storyline ended in the previous game? We embodied the characters for a short time, want to see them again for old times sake.
– The other 2 cities from San Andreas later on with possibly more storyline for the main game. Doubtful on more main story addition as the end of a GTA usually comes with a finality

Things I am wondering:
– How would a purchase of an apartment work when you are on your own 16 player server? What if someone bought the same apartment on another server and then joined you on yours? Would you own the same place or would you magically warp to another level on the same apartment. Assuming the outside could see inside (i.e. the kidnap mission from the gameplay trailer). Would there be a problem with dual ownership and locations on the building?
– When you steal a car can you then respray it and then “register” it so you own it properly?
– Would money earned in the SP missions be used in the MP world?
– Does wearing the hat from the collectors edition, while playing the game automatically make you a big baller and does the Playstation Eye/Kinect see that and make you a level 100 badass in the game? (ok maybe not)